I don't feel so well
by thebookhobbit
Summary: Near, emotions, and the disconnect between.


ahaha am I really writing Death Note fic again? Truly I am returning to my roots.

Self-indulgent autistic!Near fic heavily based off my own experiences as an autistic person with alexithymia.

* * *

When he was very young and even smaller, before he was Near and when he was Nate, they gave him a chart full of faces and words. The faces were expressions; the words were the names that match them. It was supposed to help him communicate his feelings.

He doesn't remember much from that time. Snatches of a man and woman talking while he sits in a car between them, someone holding his hands down when he's upset, a big puzzle he'd put together again and again, finishing and then dumping out and starting over: "Nate honey don't you want a new toy?" and shaking his head.

When he first comes to Wammy's House, he doesn't speak for weeks, until he realizes that it's just another kind of puzzle. The day he discovers this is the day he begins to excel.

They give him, eventually, another chart. It looks strikingly like the one he left behind. By now he knows the names of everything, all the shades of sad-angry-happy-afraid, subtle gradients from one to the other. He knows the words; it's applying them that's the problem. Every day of that first year, they ask him how he is feeling. At first he says: "I don't know". Eventually he switches to "fine". He doesn't think there's a difference.

Near knows the words. Alexithymia, flat affect, stimming, sensory-defensive and sensory-seeking. Near knows the words, collecting them like pieces of a puzzle; collecting them like they'll help him understand himself. They won't. He has always understood himself. But the words give him a way of thinking about himself in new ways, and that is useful. He collects others, too, less clinical. Childish. Robot. Machine. Emotionless. He doesn't feel that any of them are accurate, but he collects them anyway, because they offer insight. He is not emotionless; sometimes, he has too many emotions, and then he has to shut down. Sometimes emotions are like a storm he has to weather. He tries to keep those out of view.

Once upon a time he used to bang his head when they got too much, when things were too too too…too loud too fast too much light too many people - bang his head against the wall in his room, quietly if he could manage. Someone catches him at it when he is seven and tells him it could cause brain damage. He stops, after that; Near's brain is his only strength.

At age thirteen, the year he leaves, Near does not like: crunchy foods, shoes, tags, the feeling of bare floor under his feet. He does like: the click-click-click of puzzles coming together, the clattering rattle of dominos knocking each other over. Mello.

Mello. Mello is difficult and unpredictable; Near finds his sudden shifts of temper hard to predict and harder to deal with. But, importantly, he is also a kind of puzzle, one Near thinks could be more interesting than any other he's known so far.

Mello does not like Near. He resents him, Near thinks, because Near understands the book work and does better on the tests. This is simply fact. However, Near probably should not have responded to Mello's outburst with "I can't help it that I'm better than you."

Tactless. And also, apparently, arrogant. Near has never thought of himself as arrogant, but upon examination, it appears to be true. He accepts this calmly and tries to make it better one day by listing the things Mello is better than him at: all athletic activities, the biweekly music lessons that Near has long since opted out of but Mello keeps up with out of sheer stubbornness, taking decisive action, and eye contact.

Mello tells him not to patronize him, and stomps off to play football. Near finds it fascinating.

Nevertheless, he is not surprised when Mello refuses to work with him. Disappointed? Perhaps. He would like to have worked with Mello, but it probably wouldn't be efficient: they would argue too much. Nevertheless…together, Near thinks, is what L intended.

But this is not to be. He accepts this calmly, too, because there is nothing else to do. He takes L's place because someone has to; because Kira can't win the fight; because L can't be seen to be dead.

He twirls and twirls his hair, and snaps another puzzle piece into place, and lays down another piece of a trap.

Everything is a puzzle.

Especially Kira.

Near never fails to complete a puzzle.


End file.
